Europe's Roma Gypsies fear racism after Maria mystery solved

Sasha Ruseva, left, the Bulgarian mother of ten children, dancing on Friday (AP) [Correction: This is one of Sasha's daughters.]

For days, European officials have been wondering how to solve a
problem like Maria, and they've finally succeeded. Maria is the
light-skinned, blond, blue-eyed girl, about 5 years old, living with a
Roma Gypsy couple in Greece until last week. That's when authorities
decided that the dark-skinned Gypsy couple couldn't possibly be the
parents of Maria, and they decided that they must have kidnapped her.
The Roma couple were put in jail, and Maria was put in the hands of
social workers, while authorities conducted an international search
for Maria's real parents. On Friday, a 35 year old Bulgarian woman,
Sasha Ruseva, was shown by DNA tests to be Maria's biological mother,
also the mother to ten other children. Ruseva says she gave birth to
Maria while working in Greece:

"We gave her, we gifted her, without money. I didn't
take any money. I didn't have any food to give to the kid. I saw
it yesterday and I've been sick. I haven't eaten since last
night."

However, Bulgarian officials are assuming that Ruseva did, in fact,
take money for Maria, which would be a crime. It's possible that
Ruseva went to Greece with the specific purpose of selling her new
baby. There are reports that Ruseva and Atanas, her husband, are in
jail.

While the story of Maria was unfolding, Irish officials were alerted
to another blond, blue-eyed girl living with Roma parents in Ireland.
The police grabbed the girl and turned her over to social workers.
However, a DNA test revealed that the Roma Gypsy couple WERE the
child's parents, after all, and the girl was returned to the parents'
home.

These cases have raised concerns among Roma activists who fear that
these two cases, and the media's handling of them, will lead to
increased racism and racial profiling against Roma Gypsies.
According to journalist Niko Ago:

"There are many losing from the development of the
story. Not that they care a lot, though. They'll be waiting for
the next story, to prove their racist and intolerant theories,
wondering 'what has happened to this world where there are blonde
Roma?' There are blonde Roma, just as there are dark-skinned
amongst the advocates of the Nazi 'Aryan race'
theory."

Report: Palestinian leader Abbas signs peace deal with Syria's Assad

Debka, which sometimes gets things wrong, is quoting its intelligence
sources as saying that Fatah / Palestinian Authority (PA) leader
Mahmoud Abbas has blindsided U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and
signed a deal with the psychopathic genocidal president Bashar
al-Assad of Syria. The terms of the deal are that Abbas will convince
the Palestinians living in refugee camps in Syria to lay down their
arms and stop fighting al-Assad's forces and, in return, al-Assad will
order his army to stop killing Palestinians. For Abbas, this deal
gives him a political advantage over Hamas, the rules of Gaza, who had
previously been al-Assad's allies but broke ranks because al-Assad was
massively massacring innocent civilians in Syria, including many
Palestinians. For al-Assad, this deal allows his army to concentrate
on other rebel groups opposing him.

What I keep watching for in all these stories is the trend line that's
leading to the coming sectarian war in the Mideast. At the highest
level, this will be a war between Shia Muslims (Iran, Hezbollah in
Lebanon, al-Assad in Syria) versus Sunni Muslims (Saudi Arabia).
However, it's not for nothing that the ancient saying, "The enemy of
my enemy is my friend" is attributed to Arabs. Among the
Palestinians, Fatah/PA and Hamas have already been at war in 2008, and
it's possible that this deal between Abbas and al-Assad indicates a
trend toward Fatah/PA siding with the Shias in the coming war. Then,
as I've said many times, I expect Israel to be allied with Iran
against the Sunnis, and we might see a peace treaty between Israel and
Fatah/PA leading to both of them allied against Hamas and Saudi
Arabia. Granted, all of this is speculation, but it's well-informed
speculation, and supported by Generational Dynamics trends that I've
been writing about for years. Debka

Ties between Hamas and Turkey grow stronger

The other half of the previous story is the trend line in Turkey's
Mideast alliances. First, Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan is
a strong supporter of Hamas, the governing authority in Gaza, and like
Hamas, Erdogan is strongly opposed to any peace talks between Fatah/PA
and Israel. Second, Erdogan's hostility toward Israel has been
growing steadily since the deaths of nine Turkish citizens on May 31,
2010, in a confrontation between Israel's navy and the boat Mavi
Marmara in a flotilla headed for Gaza in violation of Israel's Gaza
blockade, and he's refused to normalize relations with Israel until
Israel's blockade of Gaza is lifted. And third, Turkey is supporting
the Sunni rebels fighting against the army of Bashar al-Assad, who
used to be Erdogan's close ally prior to the Syrian civil war. On the
other hand Hamas, which also used to be al-Assad's close ally, had its
headquarters in Damascus Syria, and who used to receive cash infusions
from Iran to fight Israel, is now in serious financial trouble, and is
discussing with Erdogan the possibility of moving its headquarters
from Qatar to Turkey, and getting aid from Turkey.

The role of Qatar brings up another set of trend line issues, in the
context of what's happening in Egypt. Hamas was formed in 1988 as an
offshoot of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood. Erdogan is a strong supporter
of the Muslim Brotherhood, and Qatar generously funded Egypt's
government when the Muslim Brotherhood and Mohamed Morsi were in
power. When the army deposed Morsi on July 3, the geopolitical
balance changed rapidly. Qatar stopped providing aid to Egypt, and
the slack was taken up by Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates (UAE) and
Kuwait. Qatar had also been funding the Muslim Brotherhood faction in
Syria fighting al-Assad, but the Syrian opposition factions chose
leaders favored by Saudi Arabia. However, Qatar has now started
providing support to Fatah/PA, raising problems for Hamas having its
headquarters currently in Doha, Qatar.

So if we put all trend lines together, we can expect the coming
Mideast war to align Turkey, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, and Hamas
versus Iran, Iraq, Syria and Hezbollah, with less certainty about
Qatar, PA/Fatah and Egypt. We'll have to watch and see how these
trend lines evolve, and what will happen when these countries are
forced to choose sides. Al Monitor and Israel National News